In any other scenario, I would have happily taken the door he’d left open for my self-aggrandizing, silly joke. But I could barely speak.
I wanted to believe him. But I watched his silhouette as he dropped his arms and looked out into the Capital slums, watched his smile fade and a wrinkle form between his brows. And in that moment, I could feel it: his doubt.
Freedom, yes. But he, and so many others, had once again been ripped away from everything they knew and thrown into a world that had no care for them.
I would need to care enough to make up for it all.
I went through the rest of the day in a haze. I trained. I strategized. I followed Nura, and the Syrizen, and Zeryth as we ran over strategies and maps. I kept careful track of Reshaye, and carefully patched the gaping wound of anxiety in my chest. And of course, I showed none of it. There were few things I was more adept at than hiding uncertainty, so now I draped mine in calm confidence that was smooth as silk.
Still, that evening, when I ate dinner with Sammerin, he looked at me in a way that told me he saw hints of what I refused to show.
“You look tired,” he said. Coming from him, it sounded soothing rather than somewhat insulting. He did have a gift for that.
“So do you.”
He let out a small chuckle. “I don’t doubt it.”
“Are you worried about Moth?”
“Max will protect him. From all that he can.”
From all that he can. We both understood what that meant. It was one thing to protect Moth from magic and steel, to protect him from wounds and opened flesh. But Sammerin and I, we both knew that war cut deeper than that.
I watched Sammerin silently swirl his wine. When I had first met him, his calm had seemed utterly impenetrable. But now, I could see the uncertainty he did not voice, collecting on his silence like fog on glass.
“Sometimes I’m afraid that none of this will ever end,” I murmured.
He paused before answering. “Sometimes I am too.” He set down his glass, eyes drawn to the table. “But I fought to become a healer because I wanted to fix things. Even though my abilities are… so well-suited to destruction.”
Well suited to destruction. I thought of the way my flesh looked when Sammerin was healing it, muscle and sinew and flesh weaving together as if of its own volition. And I thought of the way my body had felt under his power, when I lost control of Reshaye, back at the slavers’ hub in Threll.
He did what he had to do, and I was glad for it. But I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t see the darkness inherent in such a power. And perhaps Sammerin shouldered that just as I shouldered the darkness of the power in me.
“The human body is a magnificent machine, you know,” he said, as if to himself. “All of the muscles and veins and nerves all are in perfect sync. It’s so easy to disrupt that. I’m only a passable fighter, but I had the highest kill count in my division. I was efficient. They didn’t want to let that go.”
He said the word with a subtle sneer of disgust over his nose, and a chill ran down my spine. “How did you get out?”
“They needed me for Max, when he got Reshaye. Still, they expected me to be a warrior, not a healer. Max pushed for it, back then. Told them that he needed a healer and it might as well be me, since he was saddled with me anyway.” A small smile. “His words, of course.”
I smiled. Of course.
“It is hard to imagine you as anything but a healer,” I said. “You are so well-suited to it.”
“The truth, Tisaanah, is that healing is a fight.” And only now did his eyes flick up to meet mine, something a little sharper, a little harsher, beneath their deep calm. “Sometimes, you need to act on nothing but gut feeling. And sometimes, no matter what you do, you lose the battle. Healing is more difficult than killing in every way. But that’s how it always is. I’ve walked both roads. Destroying is easy. Creating is hard.”
He leaned back and took a long drag from his pipe. When he spoke again, smoke slipped from his lips. “But worth it,” he said. “Always worth it.”
I was given a room in the guest wing of the house. It didn’t reek of death the way the main living quarters did, nor did it arouse Reshaye’s memories quite as much. But still, as I lay there in the dark, Max’s absence ached in my bones. I was so accustomed to losing those I loved. I didn’t expect the loneliness to eat at me like this, with razored teeth and ravenous bites.
Reshaye curled around my pain like smoke caressing the rim of a pipe. I felt it pick up my sadness and examine it, curious.
Any other circumstances, and I would have pulled that emotion away. But now, I was tired.
Do you know this feeling?
{I know sadness.}
Not sadness. More like…
What was it? I let it see the memory of leaving Serel behind, the way that I had craved his company in the minutes since. The still-seeping wound of the loss of my mother, even though that had been so many years that my memory lost the details of her features.
{Grief,} Reshaye murmured.
I was surprised, that it understood grief. I suppose it is grief, in a way. To mourn an absence of someone.
{I felt that for Maxantarius. Before you came.}
I suppressed my revulsion. I wanted to say, What right did you have to mourn him, to miss him? After everything you did to him? But I carefully hid those thoughts, tucked away beneath a shroud, far away from Reshaye’s reach.
Instead I asked, What about
